I explored an abandoned military experimentation facility. I now speak a language that I shouldn’t.

I live in one of the former Soviet republics and I run a small urban exploration YouTube channel. I post videos of my explorations of creepy abandoned places, of which there is no shortage of. For the most part, the only thing creepy about these places is that they have been abandoned and are disconnected from the rest of society. I often have to edit my videos quite a bit, adding wicked screams and sinister silhouettes to make them even remotely interesting.

Last week was different. I went to visit what was allegedly an abandoned military experimentation site from the Soviet era. I had to explore it. The thought of it was euphoric, I would get more views and shares than I ever had before.

I was considering bringing a friend along since this site was considerably more remote than the rest. I abandoned the thought, not wanting to waste any time in finding and preparing an accomplice. I embarked on my solo mission as I had done many times over in the past year

The desolate facility was remarkably difficult to locate and the day had already drawn into the afternoon by the time I had managed to find it. The building was nothing spectacular to look at. If I was to describe it simply, I’d say it was a giant rectangular concrete slab with doors and windows placed in a mundane pattern.

I did not begin recording until I had entered the dull grey structure. I feared that many would abandon my video right after seeing the extremely boring architecture of the building’s exterior.

As soon I had entered the building, I felt an uncanny feeling of dread course through my body. Chills ran through my spine and my hair stood up straight. I ignored this feeling, ever-motivated by my passion for my YouTube channel. I chalked up the uneasiness to a bad case of the nerves and persisted on.

A certain coldness emanated from each room and seemed to dissipate as I climbed into the higher floors of the building. The next two hours were uneventful, to say the least. I explored the entirety of the building, ignoring the sense of unease that left the hairs on my back straight up. The building had some peculiar artifacts such as isolation cells and weird testing chamber contraptions but nothing struck me as inherently sinister about it. I was too busy faking reactions to them and thinking of the views I would get, oblivious towards the implications of these uncanny apparatus.

I was on my way out, happy to have recorded so much when I saw the padlocked door to the staircase that led downward. The sun had begun dipping below the horizon and the sense of eeriness had only been amplified. The fear I had was overpowered by the thoughts of making another video dedicated to the basement of this abandoned site. Two videos for the effort of one, I thought. Taking no more time to think further, I excitedly strolled towards the metal door that nature had certainly tarnished over the years.

The padlock was similarly rusted and weak, the two wrenches trick seemed to do the trick. It snapped off with cleanliness I hadn’t expected; I felt like a mayor cutting the ribbon to a new building in the city. The elation that ran through my veins had blocked out the looming sense of dread momentarily.

As the door opened, I was met with a putrid stench, I felt the atmosphere grow warm and humid. I should have turned back right there but my curiosity and ambition propelled me forward. The basement was quiet, too quiet. The corridors were narrow and doorways led into large rooms. I had never been more thankful for my massive 100W led flashlight that lit up each crevice of the uncanny hallways. As I walked into one of the rooms, I was surprised by its peculiar two-segment design.

While one part of the room was an observation post the other was a massive enclosure being overlooked by the aforementioned observation post. These observation posts were most abnormal in their architecture. A small room with a few seats and metal desks separated from the larger concrete enclosures by 5-inch thick glass. What was even more surprising was that the larger segment of the room had no doors or windows. No way to access them except by breaking the 5-inch thick glass.

The entire basement was just a repetition of these identical rooms. They had been abandoned in a hurry, that much was clear from the notebooks and mugs still on the desks of the rooms. But what had they been observing? What could these empty concrete hollows with no clear path of entry or exit have held? These questions were answered when I entered the last room in the most secluded corner of the basement. I knew something was inside from the muffled footsteps I heard. The footsteps were too discrete and coordinated to be animalistic in their origin. These footsteps did not resemble the sound of one or two people. It sounded like a crowd was walking inside that damned room. I should have turned back right there. There was a sliver of hope then. But now there isn’t.

As I walked into that room with my gaze was immediately transfixed on the scene before me. An army of what appeared to be people, all having halted their previous activity, staring at me with cold transfixed glare. Though they appeared human, there was something morbidly wrong with them. Some inexplicable feeling told me that this silent lot of abominations had nothing human left in them bar their physical resemblance. It was in their movement and in their eyes, their aimless stares transcribed horrors in my mind that cannot be wholly comprehended or explained.

The real horror began when they started to speak. They spoke in unison, their voices a macabre cacophony of sounds that should never have been heard, much less understood by the sane mind.

They spoke in a morbid and infernal tongue, one from realms far outside this world yet somehow inexplicably comprehensible. They told me things I do not want to hear. They spoke of the universe. They spoke of their past. They spoke of things beyond the veil of sanity and reality. Their Tartarean language was one that no sane human had uttered before. It was a language each person was familiar with yet so detached from at the same time. I have no words for the things they say but each word serves as a foul memory of things the mind does not want to comprehend. I did not want to listen to them yet I was transfixed. I wanted to know regardless of how nightmarish the sound of each wretched syllable was.

Their damned speech lasted a fraction of a second and an eternity at the same time. Within that dreadfully long instant, they had made my mind witness a myriad of unearthly horrors that it should not and cannot comprehend. Somewhere within those horrors they had told me of how they had become this way. How whatever that was human about them was replaced by this abominable monstrosity that resided in them all.

Through harrowing riddles and stories, they told me of their origins. The scientists at this facility had tempered with the mind and somehow created drugs that allowed these test subjects to reconnect with memories that the mind would rather keep forgotten.

I could never fully repeat the extent of the horrors each syllable transcribed in my mind. The most I can do is provide you a summary of how they became this way.

When we are very young and when we are unconscious, our minds are not fully capable of fending against antagonistic forces that infiltrate and fester in our unconscious. When we are young, we have not fully developed a defense to these forces and when we are asleep our minds must rest so that they may continue this hidden struggle against those damned forces the next day. Mother nature protects us from these memories of terror and anguish. Mother nature shields us from the repulsively macabre and abominable things that lie in the infinitely dark recesses of the mind; she hides away these memories in inaccessible vaults, never to be opened by the developed or fully conscious human mind.

What the researchers had done here was made these damned memories accessible to the conscious mind and had subsequently unleashed a darkness that no one can fully understand.

I do not recall how but I managed to leave that wretched place and return home in the midst of darkness and night. The unforgiving stars provided no consolation from the horrors I had beheld.

In the days that followed my feelings of fear and dread have been replaced with one much worse, hopelessness. Not only had I been witness to horrors outside the veil of sanity but I had exposed myself to a repugnant and contagious illness of the inner mind.

Let me explain. It has been a week since I visited the facility. I have deleted all the footage I captured as to deter others from ever wishing to explore those accursed halls. This feeling of hopelessness has birthed from an urge I have been having as of late.

I have begun thinking in the otherworldly tongue those abominations spoke in, not deliberately but out of an inexplicable urge deep down within me. An urge I cannot explain. I fear it is not long before I start speaking in that infernal language too; before I too become an abomination out of a man.

I am going to make sure I do not become one among those shells of human beings that now mindlessly roam that wretched hall, mumbling in a language that is becoming more and more familiar to me every day.

Please do not go exploring places you shouldn’t. You may just learn a new language as I did.